The discussion of the background of the invention herein is included to explain the context of the invention. This is not to be taken as an admission that any of the material referred to was published, known or part of the common general knowledge at the priority date of any of the claims.
Ophthalmic lens is commonly used for correcting many different types of vision deficiencies of a wearer of the ophthalmic lens. These include defects such as near-sightedness (myopia) and far-sightedness (hypermetropia), astigmatism, and defects in near-range vision usually associated with aging (presbyopia).
An ophthalmic lens is typically made of plastic or mineral material and generally has two opposing surfaces which co-operate with one another to provide a required refractive property, generally corresponding to the wearer's prescription.
Currently, for providing an ophthalmic lens, an eye care practitioner orders the ophthalmic lens at an ophthalmic lab by sending an order request to the ophthalmic lab. The order request comprises wearer data, for example the wearer's prescription, and optionally other wearer's parameters, such as a head/eye movement coordination parameter and/or an eye rotation center. The order request further comprises spectacle frame data, for example the type of spectacle frame the wearer has selected, and lens data, for example the type of ophthalmic lens the wearer has selected.
The ophthalmic lab receives the order request and sends it to an ophthalmic lens designer. The lens designer uses the data comprised in the order request to calculate an ophthalmic lens design, by using an ophthalmic lens calculator. The ophthalmic lens design comprises optical data of the ophthalmic lens to be provided to the wearer, and manufacturing process data related to the manufacturing process of the ophthalmic lens.
The ophthalmic design determined by the lens designer is sent to the ophthalmic lab and the ophthalmic lens is manufactured based on the calculated design. The manufacturing process may for instance comprise a blocking step, a surfacing step, a polishing step and a marking step.
The current ophthalmic lens manufacturing process presents some drawbacks.
Firstly, each ophthalmic lab has its own management entity, and its own apparatus and tools. Consequently, each lens designer has to be adapted to calculate manufacturing process data for the different ophthalmic labs.
This may be achieved by using, in the ophthalmic lens calculator, a database containing ophthalmic labs data related to the different labs. However, some labs data may not be obtained or updated, and this may result in performing a manufacturing process based on incorrect calculated manufacturing process data.
In a similar way, each ophthalmic lab has to be adapted to perform a manufacturing process based on manufacturing process data calculated by different lens designers. In particular, some lens designer calculators are configured to compute all the necessary information (optical information and manufacturing information) to manufacture an ophthalmic lens in a single calculation, while other lens designer calculators are mainly focused on optical calculations, and not as much on how to manufacture the design.
Secondly, the manufacturing process data are calculated prior to the beginning of the manufacturing process, and it is not possible to recalculate some of the manufacturing process data during the manufacturing process, for example to update the manufacturing process data based on measured process data. This may result in a lack of precision.